Pratt Executive Recommended Cheshire Plant Closing In 2008

PATRICK RAYCRAFT / THE HARTFORD COURANT

PATRICK RAYCRAFT / THE HARTFORD COURANT

ERIC GERSHONThe Hartford Courant

Ten months before announcing a decision to lay off more than 1,000 Connecticut workers, Pratt & Whitney executives were already expecting to close their Cheshire factory, according to an internal Pratt document presented Monday during the first day of a federal court trial over the workers' fate.

Thomas Mayes, the Pratt executive with direct responsibility for the Cheshire plant, acknowledged under questioning by lawyers for the company's biggest labor union that a December 2008 presentation prepared by his staff said Cheshire was expected to be closed in 2011.

The company informed the union on July 21 that it might close the engine overhaul and repair plant — a notice that launched a 45-day negotiating period as the Machinists union tried to head off the move.

That presentation one year ago is part of what the union says is proof that Pratt had long decided to close the plant, and a related East Hartford operation, when it came forward with the plan in July.

For months, Pratt has said it did not finally decide to shut down Cheshire and a smaller East Hartford unit without sincerely considering alternatives that would keep the plants' work in the state through late 2010. The company's labor contract with the Machinists union requires it to make "every reasonable effort" to keep the work here until then.

Still, in about five hours on the witness stand, Mayes never testified that his superiors had approved closing the Cheshire plant prior to September 2009, despite his own urging of it from mid-2008 onward.

And that's the case that lawyers for the Machinists union are trying to make.

"In this case, what you have is an enormous effort to appear to be making an effort to preserve the work," Gregg Adler, the union's lead lawyer, said in his 15-minute opening statement. "There was no effort made at all."

When the trial resumes today in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Adler will continue to press the case by seeking testimony from Mayes' boss, Todd Kallman, Pratt's president for commercial engines and global services, and two union representatives. Pratt's President, David Hess, and UTC's chief executive, Louis Chenevert, will not testify until January, if at all. They are listed as witnesses for the defense, which is scheduled to make its case then.

Mayes — one of only two witnesses called Monday — testified that the company not only considered alternatives to closing the Cheshire jet engine overhaul and repair center, but has successfully sought to make it more efficient and profitable by investing in new equipment and hiring better on-site managers.

"Steve was looking for performance equivalent to Columbus or ESA," he said, referring to former Pratt President Stephen Finger and two other Pratt factories, in Columbus, Ga., and Singapore, where Pratt intends to move the Cheshire work. Finger retired at the end of last year.

Mayes said he has consistently recommended closing Cheshire, because company projections show a drop in demand for its work. The plant was profitable in 2008 and will be in 2009, he said.

Still, testimony from Mayes and Elizabeth Amato, Pratt's top human resources executive, as well as other evidence, show that Pratt's top leadership has been focused on Cheshire since at least the spring of 2008.

"When will I see the plan to fix Cheshire?" Finger wrote to Mayes' former supervisor, Jim Keenan, in an e-mail from May 28, 2008, according to testimony. Keenan, who led the Pratt division of which Cheshire is a part, has since left the company.

That summer, Mayes developed four options for Cheshire, three of which would have kept some of its work in Connecticut. But he quickly decided that closing it made the most sense. In his cross-examination of Mayes, Steven Greenspan, a Pratt lawyer from Day, Pitney, focused on information that showed why Pratt and UTC might want to close Cheshire and move its work to plants in Columbus., Ga., and Asia.

Adler, the union's lawyer, also sought to show that Pratt and UTC human resources executives discussed how Cheshire's closure could affect the next round of contract negotiations with the Machinists, expected to start next fall.

Adler cited a June 2009 e-mail between two senior UTC executives that was copied to Amato. In it, James Miller of UTC wrote to his boss, J. Thomas Bowler, UTC's top HR executive, that Cheshire's workforce should be reduced to 150 by the time contract negotiations begin in September 2010. Cheshire currently employs more than 600 machinists.

The fewer machinists, the less their bargaining power.

"This case is about two promises," Adler said — Pratt's promise to keep the union workers employed in Connecticut through late 2010, and the union's promise not to strike before then. "There's a quid pro quo."

About 30 machinists traveled to Bridgeport for the opening of the trial.

Chris Fitzgerald, 42, who works the second shift at the Cheshire plant, drove from his home in Agawam, Mass., stopping in Suffield to meet co-worker Jack Lippi, 50.

"I came here to see Scrooge and the Grinch who stole Christmas," Fitzgerald said.